DesignCraft

DesignCraft

Page layout and publishing; an open-source, modern desktop publishing and page layout studio, built in pure Rust.

A fast, open-source desktop publishing and page layout workflow. It runs natively on macOS, Windows and Linux, and in the browser via WebAssembly.
By the ArtCraft team.

DesignCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps

_{Quarterly, Spring Issue: threaded three-column body text, a wrapped pull quote and parent-page folios, all set by DesignCraft's own paragraph composer.}

[!NOTE] ArtCraft is a community of artists from all walks of life. Digital, generative, music, games — if you make things, you're one of us. Come say hi on Discord.

The sample magazine · Why DesignCraft · Quick start · Web · Architecture · Downloads · The Crafting Apps · License and credits

The sample magazine

Every page below was laid out by DesignCraft from code (crates/engine/src/sample.rs) and exported by its own renderer. Try it yourself with File → New → Sample Document, or start the app with --sample.

Cover. A full-bleed graphic frame, display type and an italic deck.	Styles. Kicker rule, headline, deck, caption and justified two-column body.
Threading, columns and text wrap. One story flows through three columns and around the pull quote.	Swatches. Named colors and a CMYK process swatch, laid out as a palette.

Why DesignCraft

• Familiar. A familiar layout, tools, menus, panels and shortcuts: spreads and parent pages, master pages, text frames, threaded text, paragraph and character styles, tables, text wrap and more. Everything is right where you expect it.

• Beautiful type. A Knuth–Plass paragraph composer (plus single-line), dictionary hyphenation (the public-domain Moby word list plus our own trained patterns), word, letter and glyph-scaling justification, keeps, optical margin alignment, columns, baseline grid, tabs, rules and shading. Line breaks are identical on screen and in PDF.

• Fast. Multithreaded SIMD rendering (vello_cpu), copy-on-write documents with O(1) undo snapshots, and cached composition.

• Open. A documented native format, IDML import and export, INDD import (through indd-utils), editable .pptx export, and PNG, PDF (PDF/X-4, PDF/A-2b) and EPUB export.

  No subscription, no licence server, no telemetry.

• Agent-native. Every menu item, tool gesture, panel control and dialog can be driven over a JSON control channel and an MCP server, so Claude and other agents can lay out and edit documents like a designer. See docs/control-protocol.md and docs/mcp.md.

• Everywhere. One Rust codebase for desktop and the web.

Architecture

DesignCraft is an engine-first Cargo workspace with enforced layering (cargo xtask layers). The egui frontend is a separate crate, so the UI can be swapped without touching the engine.

Layer	Crates
L0	geom (paths, units & measurement parsing, corner options) · color (CMYK/RGB/Lab, swatches, tints, gradients)
L1	doc (spreads, pages, parents, layers, frames, stories, styles) · fonts (font DB, shaping, outlines)
L2	compose (the text engine)
L3	render (vello_cpu)
L4	tools (pointer events → commands + overlays)
L5	engine (session, history, command registry)
L6	ui-egui (publishing UI, control channel)
L7	apps/designcraft, apps/designcraft-cli, apps/designcraft-web

• Status and milestones: ROADMAP.md (stage: pre-alpha); feature assessment: docs/target-app-parity.md; known gaps: docs/gaps.md
• Contributor and agent rules (clean-room, asset policy, quality gates): AGENTS.md
• Bundled assets: every one is listed with its licence in ASSETS.md
• App icon and colour: a calico cat in a polka-dot scarf on DesignCraft green #7bb51c; see assets/app-icon/

Downloads

New to DesignCraft? Download it from the DesignCraft page on getartcraft.com. That's the easiest way to install it.

Want a specific build or format? On GitHub, the latest release has every build listed below, and all releases has earlier versions and their notes. <ver> in the file names is the version number, and SHA256SUMS.txt lists a checksum for every file.

Windows

Build	Installer	Portable
x64 (64-bit Intel/AMD)	designcraft-<ver>-windows-x64.msi	designcraft-<ver>-windows-x64-portable.zip
arm64 (Snapdragon and other ARM PCs)	designcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64.msi	designcraft-<ver>-windows-arm64-portable.zip
x86 (32-bit)	designcraft-<ver>-windows-x86.msi	designcraft-<ver>-windows-x86-portable.zip

Installers and executables are code-signed.

macOS

Build	File	Notes
App, universal (Apple silicon + Intel)	designcraft-<ver>-macos-universal.dmg	Signed and notarized
Command-line tool, universal	designcraft-cli-<ver>-macos-universal.zip	Signed and notarized

Linux

Format	x86_64	aarch64 (ARM64)	Notes
AppImage	designcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.AppImage	designcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.AppImage	Runs anywhere; updates itself with AppImageUpdate (.zsync files)
Flatpak	designcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.flatpak	designcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.flatpak	Sandboxed; flatpak install --user <file>
Debian/Ubuntu	designcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.deb	designcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.deb
Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE	designcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.rpm	designcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.rpm
Arch Linux/Manjaro	designcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst	designcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.pkg.tar.zst	sudo pacman -U <file>; installs as ai.storyteller.designcraft, replacing an AUR package
Tarball	designcraft-<ver>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	designcraft-<ver>-linux-aarch64.tar.gz	Unpack anywhere

RISC-V (riscv64): designcraft-<ver>-linux-riscv64.tar.gz only, cross-compiled; needs glibc 2.39+ (Ubuntu 24.04 or newer).

Community packages

These packages are maintained by community members, not by the DesignCraft team.

On Gentoo, the ::snakebyte overlay packages the Linux release as media-gfx/designcraft-bin (prebuilt) and media-gfx/designcraft (built from source):

eselect repository add snakebyte git https://github.com/switch87/snakebyte-overlay.git
emaint sync -r snakebyte
echo 'media-gfx/designcraft-bin ~amd64' >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/designcraft
emerge --ask media-gfx/designcraft-bin

FreeBSD

Build	File
x86_64	designcraft-<ver>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz

Web (WebAssembly)

Build	File	Notes
Static site	designcraft-web-<ver>.zip	Runs in a modern browser; host it on any static server

The Crafting Apps

DesignCraft is one of the Crafting Apps: free, open-source creative tools from the ArtCraft team, each written from scratch in Rust and each able to stand on its own.

	App	What it's for	Code	Learn more
	PhotoCraft	Image editing: layers, masks, type and real PSD files	GitHub	Website
	VectorCraft	Vector illustration	GitHub	Website
	FilmCraft	Video editing, color and sound	GitHub	Website
	LightCraft	Photo library and raw development	GitHub	Website
	PdfCraft	Reading, organizing and protecting PDFs	GitHub	Website
	EffectCraft	Motion graphics and visual effects	GitHub	Website
	DesignCraft	Page layout and publishing · you are here	GitHub	Website

And ArtCraft itself, our AI image and video studio for artists who want real control.

Come make things with us

Our Discord is where artists of every kind hang out: people who paint, shoot, draw, cut film, set type, and people still figuring out what they like to make. Share what you're working on, ask for help, tell us what's broken, or tell us what you wish these tools could do. Whatever your medium and however long you've been at it, you're welcome here.

discord.gg/artcraft · getartcraft.com · The Crafting Apps · DesignCraft

License and credits

DesignCraft is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option. Copyright (c) 2026 ArtCraft Team and the DesignCraft contributors. Required notices are in NOTICE.

Bundled fonts, icons, images and other assets keep their own open licenses; each one is listed with its author, source and license in ASSETS.md.

The bundled fonts, and the craft-fonts fonts embedded by release builds, are under the SIL Open Font License; all UI icons are drawn in code and are original.

The ArtCraft name, wordmark and logos in docs/brand/ are trademarks of the ArtCraft Team and are not covered by this license. They may be used only unmodified, and only as part of this repository and DesignCraft, under docs/brand/LICENSE-brand.txt. Forks and modified versions must remove them.

_{Made by the ArtCraft team and community.}